The Rise of Ransom City Read Online Free Page A

Certainly they had medicines that old Dr. Forrest could not dream of.
    My father was a very proud man, and I do not doubt they made him grovel. The Line gives nothing for free.
    Of course I knew nothing of these negotiations, until one afternoon there was the sound of many feet in the hallway outside, and the sound of ugly and unfamiliar voices, and then the door to my sickroom opened and five men entered. One of them was my father, and he stood in the doorway. The others, who quickly and without asking permission encircled my bed, were all short men in long black coats. Apart from various combinations of caps and spectacles and gloves or their absence there was no way I could see of distinguishing between them. One of the gloved ones seized my jaw and turned my head this way and that, and I could think of nothing clever to say. He let go of me and wiped his glove clean on the other glove and said, “He’ll die.”
    “I do not believe that.” My father spoke as if from a very great distance, and his tone was very flat.
    “It don’t make no difference what you believe, Mr. Ransom.”
    “What is it? What does he have?”
    “Don’t know. We don’t know. Some sickness, some poison. Some defect in the world. Something badly made. Not our business to catalog these things. What does it matter?”
    “There is something you can you do.”
    “If there was, you couldn’t afford it, Mr. Ransom.”
    “You could send back to Harrow Cross for help.”
    “Think they got nothing better to do in Harrow Cross? There’s a war on, Mr. R—”
    “I know, I know. What do you want? Damn it what do you want?”
    “You want to talk in front of your son, Ransom? Makes no difference to us if he hears but the stink in here—”
    “No. No. Thank you. You’re right. Come away. Please, come away.”

    They left. They were gone for a long time and I slept, and Jess came and chattered about nothing in particular, and I slept again, and when I next woke the Linesmen were back in the room. My father was not with them. But this time they had one of their machines with them, and I could not make out what it was exactly in the dark of my sickroom but it was the height of a low table, or maybe it was just something that sat on a table. In any case the wheels of it were turning and turning, and there was a terrible stench of burning metal and oil. Two pairs of strong hands— one gloved and one ungloved and cold— seized me by my arms and my head. I opened my mouth to protest and a leather strap was thrust into it. Like an animal my instinct was to bite on it and go silent. They lifted my head and lowered a crown of wood and wire upon it. There was a snap and a sizzle and a stink and then there was light— —and to this day I do not know if the Light was all in my head or if it really and truly filled the room but to me it made black ghosts of the Linesmen and splashed everything else white. After the Light there was pain, the way thunder follows lightning. The pain was in every part of my body, every muscle spasming and then bursting with new life, not least my heart, which rushed like an Engine until I thought I would certainly die.
    These days sometimes you see people offering the electric-cure for madness or a variety of other ailments. In my expert opinion they are mostly quacks or madmen themselves. This was the real thing. I have never seen or heard of its like since.
    They packed up their apparatus. As soon as they took the bit from my mouth I said, “What was that? What did you do? What was that?” Or I think I said it. In any case they did not answer, but marched silently out, single-file. I could still see the Light as they left, and it was some time before it faded.

    The Linesmen demanded two things of my father. The first debt came due at once. I have said that my father had a certain authority in that town. He was not a priest but the next closest thing. He was their link to the next world. When he spoke they listened.
    The